string theory [turing&astrid]

Shooting stars all break up
And even though it seems like half the world away

She looks up and I swear, those blue eyes make the world spin backwards along its axis. It's heliocentric motion moves in reverse, back to a time when I thought the world would stop spinning when we were apart. The only time I've been wrong, because she shattered my vase and stormed out of my apartment door and the next day, sunlight peered through my blinds all the same and I realized the world would keep spinning, even when we were apart.

Acceptance was a late stage, over twenty four hours later in a world where I expected time to stop. Waiting for her to rap her hands against my front door and when I opened the door, her hair would tickle my cheeks as she threw herself into my arms for the thousandth time. I went about my day, writing emails, writing notes and reading books but the knock never came. I'd stayed up until twelve o'clock, a book in my hands sat by the window waiting for the sound of high heels against concrete.

I fell asleep by the window and I woke up wondering if I'd dreamed the whole thing.

I bite my lip as she gets straight to the point, her words cutting straight to the root of the tension leaving the air thick. "Of all the jobs you could have taken, Turing...Why this one?"

I suppose I was always terrible at small talk.

She looks up and there's no expectation for my fingers to find themselves within hers. Learning to read faces was a learned skill, not a natural one like studying sequences and series. So perhaps it's no surprise that to this day, she's still a mystery to me. Not a theorem I can prove, not a function I can put values into and churn out a result, but a riddle solved over a year too late. A book of over a thousand pages and I don't know where to start because even the beginning seems to bring me around another cycle.

I sigh, wondering why I took this job out of all the job offers I could've taken. It seemed ideal, to bring numbers into something as popular as the Hunger Games, I didn't know she'd be here. Or maybe I did and I'd just forgotten, I tell myself to doesn't matter now.

Yet somehow it does, while I'm under the scrutiny of my only girlfriend and first ex-girlfriend. I think she would rather be anywhere but here, or she wants me to go. I don't know, I just know that she's upset, or frustrated or jut tired of seeing my face despite the year that's past since she stormed out of my apartment and left me to watch the horizon by myself.

I shrug my shoulders. "I left my old one and out of all the offers I had, this was better paying. Plus, it would've gotten my voice heard." A weak smile and dry chuckle despite the fact that humor's impossible to find buried beneath a year's worth of heartache and build up. I'm not lying, I welcomed the opportunity to broadcast the story a series of numbers can tell, show the narrative a set of averages and correlation can show. I wanted to be heard. I leave out the fact that I got myself fired in my irrational attempt to get over her; it'll never happen again.

I told myself it would be easy, to detach myself from the downfall of the common man because I was a better man now. Better than the one who feared thin ice and couldn't so much as get a sentence out without twisting his tongue. I never stuttered in her presence, I never feared the world would sink when her hand was in mine and for some reason I never thought to appreciate the fact until I watched the darkest horizon in an age, alone.

Spin the world forwards and I've only remembered the familiar feeling now.

"Besides, I didn't know you would be working with me," I say, almost in a desperate attempt to justify my sin of simply existing in the same world as she did. Left with nothing but my words, I'm almost scrambling to get anything out. "Anyway, I suppose I could ask the same thing about you, why'd you take this one out of everyone who'd employ you?"

It doesn't quite sound right, attempting to justify the simple sin of existence.

I allow myself to look down for a second and there's a whole galaxy or memories at my fingertips. Each star a memory and each planet a memento, and every goddamn day I work doesn't seem to shrink everything to an infinite small point so that it can simply be buried in the back of my mind. It only seems to expand with each day that passes, forever red shifted. Another star to pick from as they quickly lose purpose with the loss of the center of their orbit.

We've both moved onto bigger and better things, though. It doesn't matter how big that galaxy gets because it's lost its purpose without its orbit. The world still spins, even when we're apart. I don't feel anything, not anymore. I tell myself I must've lost them somewhere between the false horizon and the new job. I look up into those blue eyes and pray that galaxy stops expanding.

"Do you hate me?"

I've never been any good at small talk.

[zoe]

Shooting stars all break up
And even though it seems like half the world away

I don't understand.

My mind's been spinning a tall tale for the past year when I'd presumed it to be the only trust worthy constant. Yes, it could expand through learning, but it could never be lost. It could never have me presume things were true when they weren't and even when everything seemed lost, when the world began to splinter and collapse piece by piece, I knew that I could retreat into the darkest depths of my mind for sanctuary. Bury my nose in a book, find the nearest bar, it would be easy. It was the only constant I considered, those could never be wrong.

So naturally, when acceptance came slowly on the horizon on the trail of a fallen star, I had myself convinced I didn't care anymore. I didn't care that Astrid had shattered my vase along with any future we had together, I didn't care that I'd never see her again because she'd fall into the arms of someone else. Someone else who'd fight harder than the dead teenagers on our screens when he thought she was fading from his life. I never learned to claw and fight for anything, only to attach definitions to figures and form regression lines when I saw trends.

I never believed in fate, just facts and figures. Ten can't divide into eleven -nothing can- and perhaps that's just me. A prime number.

I convinced myself that was the basic case, that I was just prime and nothing could be changed and there was no one who'd be a match. She faded from the back of my mind and I forgot. I thought I'd understood why it didn't hurt anymore to come home and not hear that knock on my door. I thought I understood why it didn't hurt to be allowed into her apartment anymore and I thought I understood that being alone wasn't all the bad. I'd been doing it for years, from adolescence to adulthood. I understood that I could live in a world that turned without her.

"You don't get access to my head anymore, Turing. You just,"

I don't understand why hearing that hurts when I'd known this was the case before now.

I don't show it though, I don't recoil. I just sit there and watch; it's all I know to do. Observe and watch for something, anything. She bites her lip and looks up and I just watch, I see but I don't observe. I see but I don't understand. She sighs, as if conceding a loss to a game I don't realize we're playing. "No, I don't," and it's almost a relief to hear the words explicitly.

I don't understand why I care, why I should care. The pain numbed somewhere between the loss of my old job and the beginning of my new one; Astrid was a thing of the past. A riddle I couldn't solve and a theorem I couldn't prove, I moved on. She shakes her head, another sigh of defeat, and I don't understand what she's raising a white flag to.

When time passed, I understood that she was gone. Gone with her wild nature and blonde hair that cascaded with the perfect balance of order and disorder, just right. And with her went nights spent huddled together in front of the television, arranging her things because I was driven by my quirky nature and the whole idea of us. It took me time to understand, took me time to get used to living without my anchor but I expect she knew straight away. She left.

"Do you really think that we can work well together?" She asks.

I sit back in my chair, biting my bottom lip and letting my eyes wander. Taking in everything that's stayed the same and anchoring onto everything that changed. I never considered it, the fact that we would be together as thousands of people listen to us. That the entire Capitol would be listening, scrutinizing our every move and spotting every hint for imperfection. And now, all it takes is a spotlight too bright for everything between us to be exposed to the rest of the Capitol.

I was too worried about being blinded by the spotlight, not her.

But I want this, adequate time spent in the spotlight and the chance to be blinded by it. The world was a stage, and through my adolescence and my time as a young adult, I had not been given my fair share of time in it. Partly because I was too broken to want it, too afraid of my own shadow and trapped within the limits set by my own tongue. I was too afraid of breaking thin ice and drowning before I could find my voice.

And then I found it. I found it and if there's one thing in the array of concepts I understand, it's that I won't let this opportunity slip. Astrid or not.

"I think we'd be good at this" I remark, quickly realizing that's not really answering her question. I ignore uncertainty and nod my head. "We can. I know we can, and I know we have to," I say simply, twiddling with my thumbs. "It just has to be during work and on air and then," my voice trails off. I don't understand how it's so hard to say. "And then you never have to speak to me outside of that, if you want."

I'll never understand how the one thing I defined as constant could've been so horribly wrong.

[zoe]